Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  I returned home, grateful that Hugh was still conscious, and when I repeated what I’d said at the market, he corrected me. It seems he did not “cut his finger” but, rather, “cut of himself the finger.”

  He applied the Band-Aid, cleaned the bloody knife, and went back to making lunch while I watched from the doorway, hoping he might stab himself again so I could return to the store with both the reflexive verb “to cut of oneself” and the proper word for Band-Aid.

  October 8, 1998

  Paris

  I have two homework assignments to hand in, and though I could make it easy, I just can’t stop myself from having fun with it. One of the assignments involves accepting or rejecting social invitations. When asked if she wants to join Henri for a run around the lake, Natalie could reply, “With pleasure!” Instead I’m having her say, “That would be different. I’ll just put on my leg and we’ll be ready to go!”

  I’m liking the teacher a lot more since the new semester started. The class is smaller, and the students are a bit older. It’s a good group. I like the Italian lawyer who isn’t afraid to admit when he’s lost. The Colombian gets a lot of grief, but it’s his fault for not doing his homework.

  October 9, 1998

  Paris

  After class I took Amy to a pet shop on the Right Bank, where we saw a miniature potbellied pig for $300. He was the size of a house cat and stood in his cage urinating a puddle. Amy can’t believe I didn’t walk out with him; she was mad, practically, and kept saying, “It’s not expensive,” as if that’s the only thing that would stop a person from buying a pig and keeping it in his third-floor apartment. I tried imagining him as a pet, but all I saw were his sharp hooves scratching my beautiful floors.

  October 10, 1998

  Paris

  Just as Amy told me and Hugh that she’s never heard anyone in Paris say “Excuse me,” she got hit in the knee with a Coke can, and the boy who threw it called out in French that he was sorry.

  October 12, 1998

  Paris

  Today the high school students went on strike. There were tens of thousands of them marching down the boulevard in front of the school and we could hear their chants all afternoon. The kids were marching in support of their teachers, who’d had a strike of their own a few weeks back. I’m not certain what it was about, but someone told me that the government had wanted to cut some jobs. Walking home from class, I was surrounded by teens with messages painted on their faces. They stopped to chide customers walking into stores and scolded the merchants for not closing in support of their cause.

  October 13, 1998

  Paris

  Today the teacher called me a sadist. I tried to say that was like the pot calling the kettle black but came out with something closer to “That is like a pan saying to a dark pan, ‘You are a pan.’”

  October 16, 1998

  Paris

  I noticed that the teacher was wearing new glasses today. This led to an explanation of the difference between nouveau and neuf. The former is apparently new to you, while the latter is factory-fresh. I did some homework on the train but still have to type up a paper on the differences between New York and Paris. We’re learning to compare things, to say that someone is less tall than her neighbor, more intelligent than her brother, as ugly as her father. I no longer dread school the way I did a month ago but am really going to have to work if I want to keep up while in America for my tour.

  October 22, 1998

  Paris

  Yesterday, there were more student demonstrations. Because the high schoolers want more teachers, they sometimes need to overturn cars and destroy phone booths. After class I sat in the Luxembourg Gardens for a while, reading Mama Black Widow, a novel by Iceberg Slim. I’m all for any book that uses the words pulchritudinous and hungry pooh hole on the same page.

  October 23, 1998

  Paris

  One nice thing about school is that it’s made Friday meaningful again. I now feel that, having gotten through five days of homework, I have something to celebrate. Last night’s assignment was to write something about a movie. I chose Robert Altman’s Nashville and spent six hours on my one-page paper. It’s the articles that kill me, that and words like drifter, which translates to “one who travels without a goal.”

  Meanwhile, today we took a test that involved multiple choice and an audio exam. It was hard and made all the harder by the teacher, who wandered around the room with a lit cigarette that smelled so good, I found it nearly impossible to concentrate. The audio test was discouraging in that a French twelve-year-old could have passed it with no problem. Then, too, I hadn’t taken one since Kent State twenty years ago. After we finished, the teacher invited us all to the cafeteria for coffees. Everyone smoked, and it was nice to sit together outside of class.

  November 23, 1998

  San Luis Obispo, California

  At five thirty this morning, the SuperShuttle came to take me from Ronnie’s apartment to the San Francisco airport. There were three other passengers on board, but the only ones awake were me and the driver, who was listening to talk radio. The theme was alien abduction, and the guest, a man named Dr. Reed, claimed to have been taken at a picnic ground. He was not at liberty to discuss its location; this, he said, on the advice of his lawyer, who told him it might hurt his case.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Is he suing the aliens or the campground?”

  “Most likely the campground,” the driver said. “Chances are this isn’t the first time a thing like this has happened. They should have posted signs.”

  This is not what you want to hear from a man responsible for four lives.

  “The reason this show comes on at five a.m. is that they don’t want regular people listening to it,” he said. “They don’t want us to know.”

  Alcohol and telephones do not mix. On Saturday night I called Paris from the Heathman Hotel in Portland. I’d figured it might cost $30, but I hadn’t spoken to Hugh in weeks. It was late, and I was drunk and feeling lonely. I had only vague memories of the call the following morning when I was presented with a bill for $156. I’m still trying to remember what we talked about, but I can’t recollect much aside from the news that Dennis (the cat) is eating a lot.

  November 27, 1998

  Phoenix

  Ted’s boyfriend James loaned me a cookbook called Imperial Dishes of China, and I found myself reading it as though it were a collection of beautifully titled short stories. “A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix” stood out, but nothing compared to “Monkey Heads on a Pine Tree.” In France I often leaf through recipes in search of words I think might come in handy. It’s how I learned the verbs for “to simmer” and “to chop.” Imperial Dishes was in English, but still I feel I came away with something. Here were instructions such as “Rinse the lips twice in cold water” and “Remove the penis and carve it into bite-sized pieces.” Mental pictures aside, it was disturbing to read such things in the form of a direct order. “Scald the vagina and remove any remaining hairs,” for example.

  As literature, Imperial Dishes was outstanding, but as an actual working cookbook, I think it left a few too many holes. A homosexual’s notion of bite-sized penis is no doubt dramatically different than that of, say, an Orthodox rabbi’s. It’s just not specific enough. When told to “arrange the camel paw attractively,” my first question was “How?” Camel paws don’t even look attractive on camels. Where do you buy these ingredients in the first place? If you can’t find a camel paw, can you use a donkey paw instead? Do donkeys even have paws? And what’s an acceptable substitute for a vagina? It’s frustrating, but that’s what I liked about Imperial Dishes of China. It made me think.

  December 4, 1998

  Paris

  I returned to French class after five weeks away and the teacher kissed me.

  December 10, 1998

  Paris

  As a homework assignment I need to write a letter from a man to his wife. The two are on the brink o
f divorce—the teacher’s idea, and a good one, I think.

  Today in class we read an essay about social change in France. The teacher is outraged over a new program that will allow friends and roommates to enjoy the same tax rates as married couples. Single people pay a lot here, as the government wants to promote marriage and childbirth. The new program was designed to give gay couples the same rights as married people, but instead, the government, afraid it might appear to be condoning homosexuality, has opened it up to any two people living under the same roof: roommates, a mother and her middle-aged daughter. It’s cowardice, the teacher says.

  December 12, 1998

  Paris

  The unemployed have gone on strike—at least that’s how I understood it from listening to the radio. The teacher explained that, seeing as they have no jobs, they can’t actually walk off them. Instead, they’re holding a protest and insisting on a Christmas bonus with their unemployment check. She’s in their corner and said it’s unfair to punish children just because their parents were thrown out of work.

  The information desk at the Louvre is also on strike, demanding better working conditions. By this, do they mean a public so well informed, they won’t have to pester the employees with questions?

  December 13, 1998

  Paris

  I took a walk last night and ran into Richard, who lives in a grand Left Bank apartment overlooking the river. We talked for half an hour or so, and he told me about a friend of his, a journalist, who each week buys $60 worth of magazines from a kiosk near the Café de Flore. She was there with a male friend recently, a photographer who wanted to see if one of his pictures had been used in the latest Italian Vogue. The guy started leafing through it when the newsagent said, the way they do here, “This is not a lending library.”

  The journalist said she would pay for the magazine, and when she pulled out her wallet the newsagent said, “Why don’t you go get fucked up the ass by a nigger.”

  So much stuff goes over my head here.

  December 14, 1998

  Paris

  For homework we’re supposed to write about gift-giving practices in our home countries. I don’t actually understand the assignment. We read an essay in class, the teacher asked how flowers are wrapped in Japan, and then she told a story about her husband’s Greek grandmother spitting into the mouth of a newborn baby.

  December 15, 1998

  Paris

  Yesterday the teacher held up my essay on social change during the 1960s and pronounced it “a remarkable document.” I made plenty of grammatical errors but gained points on the structure. Today I turned in my paper on social customs. In it I wrote that on the eve of an American man’s wedding, it is customary for his parents to cut off two of his fingers and bury them near the parking lot. The groom has eight hours in which to find them, and if he does, it means that the marriage will last.

  December 22, 1998

  Paris

  This was the last day of class until the new semester begins in January. We presented the teacher with the lighter I had had engraved and the carton of cigarettes I had collected money for. She seemed to appreciate both. The lesson was hard, and we broke off fifteen minutes early to eat cake. The room had a nice, festive atmosphere until the Hong Kong student confronted the teacher, saying, in English, “How come you no pass me? How come me alone and not nobody else?”

  Personally I like this student, if only because she’s so bad. She’ll occasionally come to class or do her homework, but only if she’s in the mood. Her French doesn’t sound much different from her Cantonese, and as long as she was around, I was never the worst one.

  December 24, 1998

  Paris

  As our cab left for the train station this morning, my father turned to me and said, “Ask the driver if it’s going to rain all day.”

  I don’t think he cared what the answer was. He just wanted to see if I could ask properly, not that he’s any judge. He doesn’t speak a word of French, but that hasn’t stopped him from criticizing me.

  “He said that yes, it’s going to rain all day,” I said.

  My father nodded. “It’s coming in from the west. Rain always comes from the west in France.”

  This is going to be a long eight days.

  December 31, 1998

  Paris

  Last night, shortly after dinner, my father’s head caught on fire. He was leaning toward a candle, examining a scratch on the table, and seconds later I noticed the flames, which encircled his scalp like a brilliant crown. He looked like a happy king, content that all was well throughout the land. Just as he realized what was happening, Gretchen bounded over with a cloth napkin. Dad retreated into the bathroom and spent ten minutes examining the damage with a hand mirror. This morning we went to buy him a hat.

  1999

  January 1, 1999

  Paris

  Dad ate dinner last night with his airplane ticket in his shirt pocket. With it was a slip of paper upon which he had written the estimated taxi fare to Charles de Gaulle, including the amount he planned to tip the driver. He wore a tan shirt with epaulets, a scarf, a sweater, and a Windbreaker. He wore a hat. The poor thing was more than ready to leave and would have gladly spent the night at the airport—not in a hotel but just sitting in a chair, waiting. It’s not France he dislikes, exactly. I think he just hates to be away from his TV.

  January 4, 1999

  Paris

  School started today and we got two new students. One’s a pregnant Chinese woman who is married to a Frenchman and hopes to name her baby Beyond, and the other is a German fellow who moved here for love. The rest of us introduced ourselves, and then we all recounted our Christmas holidays. I said that half my family came and stayed for sixteen days, and my classmates audibly drew in their breath. Then I said that I received nine cartons of cigarettes and that before my father left for home, his head caught on fire.

  Next came Milton, who got drunk on New Year’s Eve and fell on his face, breaking a few blood vessels. When Polish Anna’s turn came, the teacher accused her of getting drunk as well, even though she denied it. The teacher has this thing about Poles and alcohol.

  January 7, 1999

  Paris

  In French class we’re studying the gérondif, which is used when someone is doing two things at once. As part of last night’s homework we were instructed to write six sentences along the lines of “She sang while vacuuming.” It was a simple and unrewarding exercise until I turned to the Pocket Guide to Medical French that Amy gave me for Christmas. The book is full of terrific phrases, everything from “Do you feel paranoid?” to “Have you noticed any unusual discharge?” I spent a lot of time constructing sentences for the assignment, my favorite being “‘Has anything else been inserted into your anus?’ The doctor posed the question as he examined the wounded sphincter.”

  The teacher collected the papers at the end of class and, as usual, took a moment to skim through what I’d handed her. Things like this can go either way. The paper is grammatically correct, but something tells me I may have missed the mark here.

  January 14, 1999

  Paris

  The teacher was extremely unhappy with the other day’s homework and entered the room as if it were a boxing ring. When she’s angry, nothing can please her. She didn’t warm up until the last half hour of class. We’d listened earlier to a series of recorded phrases and were instructed to match each one with a picture. A kid’s voice shouted, “We won!” for example, and we matched it with a drawing of a boy raising his arms in victory. This somehow led her to tell us that in Greece, you indicate the number five by holding your palm toward your face. Palm outward means the equivalent of “Fuck you.”

  In both Greece and Turkey, nodding yes means no, as does closing your eyes. She and a friend went to Istanbul once and couldn’t find a room to save their lives. Finally, at midnight, they entered a hotel and asked if there was a vacancy. The desk clerk nodded, and, delighted, they brought in their ba
gs. In the end, she said, the man let them sleep on the roof.

  She brightens up eventually, the teacher, but you have to clear the path. Today, every time I thought she was coming out of it, Ralf would ask a question pertaining to something we had supposedly learned months ago. Then she’d furiously write on the board, turning to say, “Now do you understand it?”

  Ralf would squint and think a moment before saying, “No,” and off she’d go again. Twice she told Luis to shut up, and I got scolded when we were asked to identify the class of people represented in a comic strip she gave us. I said I thought they were working class. When asked why, I pointed out the Jesus snow globe displayed atop their television set.

  “That shows what you know,” the teacher said. “The French proletariat would never decorate their homes with religious iconography.” Or at least I’m guessing that’s what she said.

  “OK,” I said. “They’re low class.”

  That’s when she really tore into me, saying she never again wanted to hear language like that from us. She’d just the other day taught us three different words for “farting” along with the phrase “Go fuck yourself on a pole,” but “low class” is out-of-bounds?

  My fellow students began to guess. Were they middle class? Retired class?

  “No!” the teacher shouted. “For God’s sake, they’re working class.”